Ashes
by zestycrouton
Summary: 'It was only fair that he be given the chance to live again. The chance to grow up in a world devoid of her meddling. The chance to be free of her and the curse she'd placed into his hands. Free in the way she'd never be of him.' Post-OoT. Part of the ongoing 'Timeline' mini-series.


_Wow, this one is... really short. Hmm... maybe I'm focusing too much on brevity... Ah well. Whatever. It says what it needs to._

 _Just a quick note before we start: this one-shot is another entry in my unofficial 'Timeline' mini-series in which I explore the ways I think Link and Zelda's dynamic plays out after the various games they appear in. This time we're looking at Ocarina of Time's Adult Timeline ending; or rather, the ending of the game from Zelda's pov after sending Link back to his childhood. No, you do not have to have read any of the other stories I've posted thus far for this to make sense, though if you would like to please feel free. So far I've completed 'Constellations' (WW), 'When Twilight Falls' (TP), and 'A Place to Call Home' (OoT/MM)._

 _And yeah, I know I said my SS one would be up next, but I wound up rewriting it, so here's this one for now._

* * *

 _ **Timeline**_

 **-Ocarina of Time-**

 **Ashes**

" _Now, go home, Link. Regain your lost time!_

" _Home… where you are supposed to be… the way you are supposed to be…"_

The light thickened. The wind intensified. Her Hero was lifted, swept up in the maelstrom, forever carried out of her reach.

" _Thank you… Link… Good-bye…"_

He was gone.

When her vision cleared, she was back where she'd started, standing alone in the wreckage of Ganondorf's Tower.

The silence immediately engulfed her. All around, the rubble lay scattered in discordant, lumpy heaps of blackened debris. Smoke billowed up from the lava pits below, obscuring the sky behind a shroud of murky brown. The wind that gusted across the wreckage was hot and dry, stinging at her eyes, chaffing her skin.

The stillness of it all felt… oppressive.

It was over.

She felt weary, exhausted beyond comprehension, down to her very soul. Her body ached. Her dress was filthy, shredded and torn and covered with dirt and ash and filth. She needed a bath. And food. And a change of clothes. And a place to stay. To move. She needed to move.

And yet in spite of all of that, she couldn't find within herself the willpower to do so.

Her chapped lips parted. She inhaled slowly, an unsteady breath that expanded her chest, making her ribs groan in agony. The taste of ash was thick on the air, cloying on her tongue, clogging her throat.

She let it all out in a rush.

It was over… Finally. Finally, the war had ended. Ganondorf was defeated, sealed away in the Sacred Realm. Her people were safe. And Link was…

Link was…

Her once delicately gloved hand tightened around the Ocarina, the other tangling up in the folds of her tattered skirt. Seemingly of its own volition, her body began to shiver and quake. Something powerful and raw welled up inside of her, something that felt suspiciously like grief.

She tried to fight it at first, tried to summon up all the intense Sheikah training Impa had given her over the course of the last seven years of nightmare and apocalypse and ruin. She needed to be brave. She needed to be strong. She needed to be able to withstand anything. For her people. For the future. For Hyrule.

She failed.

Her shoulders trembled. Her knees weakened. Her throat constricted. Crystalline eyes flooded with tears, and she lied and told herself it was the smog and dust filling the air that had caused it.

It was all for naught. No amount of denial could prevent her from accepting the stark truth when everything around her proclaimed it aloud for the world to see.

She was alone.

Images of his face flashed before her eyes, and she shuddered, clenching her teeth, desperate to keep the thoughts at bay until she could at the very least escape this place and find…

Find what? She had no one left to turn to but herself, nowhere left to flee for sanctuary.

Link was gone, and she was alone.

Before she knew what was happening, her knees buckled and she hit the ground, sending up puffs of ash and dust. An anguished sound tore itself from her throat, a cross between a scream and a wail.

He was gone… He was gone! She'd let him go! And now she had no one! No one!

She buried her face in her hands as she wept pitifully on the ground, completely hunched over, ignorant of the soot and filth she was smearing across her cheeks, the Ocarina pressed tightly against her forehead. Her chest ached as though someone had plunged their fist into her ribcage and torn her still-beating heart from her breast, leaving her to bleed out impotently on the floor.

The island upon which Ganondorf's Tower had stood was silent save for the sounds of her sobs, her soul-wrenching cries that none by the goddesses bore witness to, the scorched earth greedily drinking up her tears, ignorant of the grief that consumed her.

In her mind's eye, she could see him. Her Hero, the boy upon which she'd placed all her hopes and dreams, ignorant of whether his tiny shoulders could even support the weight. It was a monstrous thing she had done, saddling a child with such an impossible burden.

" _I've been waiting for you, Hero of Time…"_

Her Hero, who had risen from his seven-year slumber to find the world she'd allowed Ganondorf to ruin, and had thrown himself into setting things to rights, never once complaining, never once contemplating abandoning her to her fate.

" _I waited for seven years..."_

He had given everything for her… But what had she done for him? What had she ever given him other than pain and misery and torment and death?

 _"Time passes, people move... Like a river's flow, it never ends..."_

What must he have thought of her? She'd been too afraid to ask, even there at the end. She'd condemned him to endless days and sleepless nights of perpetual war and carnage- surely, he had loathed her. Seen her for the failure she was. The princess in whose decade of wisdom and understanding, inflated by her own sense of self-importance and unqualified hubris, had thought she alone knew how to fix the world. The princess who allowed Ganondorf access to the Sacred Realm. The princess who had consigned Hyrule to oblivion.

Yet the one who had truly paid the price for her pride was him, not her.

" _It is something that grows over time… a true friendship."_

In the years of his absence, while Zelda had hidden away, training with Impa, watching her homeland burn, her thoughts had turned to him almost constantly. Even before Ganondorf's attack, it seemed as though he was always on her mind.

The boy from her visions. The literal boy of her dreams. She built him up to be some sort of grand, invincible hero, a goddess-chosen savior, a knight astride a gleaming horse who would come to save the day. As she grew older, her childish delusion had died down somewhat, but in the back of her mind, he remained atop his pedestal. He was her hope, her salvation. She needed him. Not just to save her people, but to save her. From her guilt. From her loneliness.

" _A childish mind will turn to noble ambition... Young love will become deep affection..."_

Disguised as she had been, he hadn't understood her veiled confession. She wasn't certain she'd realized it at first either until the words had slipped past her lips, and not for the first time she found herself grateful for the cowl Impa had given her to hide her face.

She loved him. She hardly knew him, but she loved him. And though the rational part of her mind forced her feelings down, told herself the world came first, that her affection for Link was merely a by-product of their circumstances, she found her feelings for him only grew the more contact she had with him.

She lived for the look in his eyes when she'd appear before him as Sheik. The confusion, the burgeoning trust, the steely determination, the confidence, the courage. Her visits began to drag out as she lingered longer than she should, part of her desperately hoping that this time, _this time_ he would figure it out. This time he would catch her and not let her go.

He never did.

" _The flow of time is always cruel…"_

In the end, once the battle was over and Ganondorf was sealed, she'd known what it was she had to do. She had forced too much on him. Taking and taking without ever giving anything in return. She owed him. Owed him more than she could ever possibly hope to repay.

But she could try.

" _Link, we shall meet again!"_

And so she sent him back. Back to his childhood, back to prevent this awful future and regain the youth she'd so selfishly stolen from him. It was only fair that he be given the chance to live again. The chance to grow up in a world devoid of her meddling. The chance to be free of her and the curse she'd placed into his hands.

Free in the way she'd never be of him.

" _What's your name? ...Link... Strange, it sounds... familiar."_

Even now that he was gone, there was something about him that stuck to her. She'd known it from dreams, even before they'd met, even before the world had fallen apart. Something about him that caught her attention, that turned her head, that made her stare.

Who was this boy from the forest? This nobody? This specter from her dreams? Why did the sight of him twist in her heart, paint her with the bittersweet tones of nostalgia, of childhood fantasies, of yearning? Something deep in her soul, something unknowable, resonated when he was there. Lives, thoughts, feelings, half-remembered and impossible and persistent and real… Her own personal anamnesis. He represented to her something unquantifiable, something she longed for with every fiber of her being.

And she had given him up.

What other choice did she have? What else was she supposed to do?

Finally, her seven-year war was at an end. And yet for Zelda, the victory rang hollow. She had lost.

Time would still march on, however, Hero or no. She would have to move on with it. There was much that needed to be done in Hyrule still. Though she had done her utmost to attempt to repay her insurmountable debt to Link, she had only just begun trying to repay her debt to her people. A lifetime of work stretched out before her, a lifetime of struggle and turmoil to restore a country in ruins to its former glory. A lifetime alone. But she would give it her all. She had to. She owed it to them.

Perhaps, one day, they could learn to forgive her. Perhaps, in another life, her Hero could learn to forgive her too. And perhaps, if that day ever came, she could learn to forgive herself.

But for now, she allowed herself this moment.

Kneeling in the ashes of her failure, the Princess of Hyrule wept alone.

* * *

 _Ok! Four down, and like... uh... I dunno, like seven or so to go? I don't remember. I have 3 more in various states of completion and ideas for another two, and I hope to include additions for every game eventually (or at least the ones with different Links and Zeldas), but we'll get there when we get there._

 _Seriously this time, SS will be next, which is good because the last three I posted were all kinda... downers. But SS will be nice and happy, so if you're sick of my sadder stories, fret not! There are happy ones on the way!_

 _Ok. See you next time._

 _Keep it Zesty._

 _ZC_


End file.
